What if we are consistently attributing poor health to the wrong things? Focusing too much on fats and carbohydrates, all the while, important cellular processes in our body are hampered by micronutrient deficiency.

For someone who’s interested in nutrition, I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time obsessing over protein, carbohydrate and fat. And very little time understanding micronutrients.

I don’t seem to be alone in this matter. Popular diets such as Atkins, Weightwatchers & ketogenic diet ALL focus on things other than micronutrients.

So this post is to highlight an issue I didn’t know we had. Which is, by not taking micronutrients ‘seriously’ – we are shortening our potential life span and introducing the risk of illness far earlier into our lives.

But in practice, we have widespread micronutrient deficiency across the globe. It’s particularly concentrated in under developed countries, but is also found in developed countries like the US5, in particular in the poor, young children, the obese and the elderly.

But first… what are micronutrients?

Micronutrients come under 2 categories; essential and non-essential.

Essential micronutrients are elements or compounds that our bodies can’t construct from other ingredients (our body is generally very good at synthesising the things it needs). They are used for processes such as energy production, cell repair and enzyme activation (to name just a few). And naturally, without them, we have a problem (!)

Below I’ll focus on the 40 micronutrients essential to humans. Beyond this list, there are more micronutrients, although they are not considered essential humans. That doesn’t however mean they don’t have uses within the body.

Micro vs Macro Nutrients

Macronutrients are widely talked about. They consist of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Essentially they are the energy and building blocks for our bodies’ metabolism.

But we can’t run our bodies on macronutrients alone. There’s a range of 40 micronutrients that are essential. They can be categorized into vitamins, minerals, omega-3s and amino acids. Their roles are crucial to perform all kinds of biological functions in our bodies.

Micronutrients come bundled up with the foods we eat. By eating a varied diet, incorporating vegetables, nuts and animal products, we can generally get enough of these micronutrients to live healthily.

But one curious thing about micronutrients, is that we can continue functioning relatively well, even if we’re very low on them.

And that is part of why they get often overlooked. Lets take the comparison of vitamins to coffee.

If a regular person (not a coffee junkie), drinks a coffee, they quickly feel the affects of the caffeine from the coffee in their body.

Compare that to a regular person taking a vitamin pill, packed with micronutrients, they are unlikely to feel anything at all.

Similarly, if you’re deficient of a particular micronutrient for a period of time, you’re also unlikely to feel anything different.

It takes a long time to feel the effects of micronutrient deficiency. But this doesn’t mean the shortage isn’t doing damage. It turns out it is.

What happens if we don’t get enough micronutrients?

We’re generally all familiar with examples of extreme micronutrient deficiency. For example, the story of early sailors who needed to pack limes onto their boats in order to avoid getting scurvy. They only realized the necessity of vitamin C when attempting to subsist for long periods of time on basic foods like potatoes, and then would get sick. Back then they hadn’t isolated the benefits of limes to vitamin C, they just knew limes prevented them getting sick.

Fortunately these days, extreme micronutrient deficiency is rare. But what is happening is long term micronutrient deficiency.

This can have varying effects.

At an extreme, for example, being deficient in folate (a micronutrient found in green vegetables), can lead to DNA damage comparable to that of high dose radiation. This was figured out through experimentation in cell cultures1.

And then more subtilely, we have what Bruce Ames named ‘Triage Theory’. And its a much bigger deal than it’s being credited for (see his paper and YouTube talk for more details).

Similar to how hospitals have to triage patient injuries, treating the most life threatening ones first, in order to ensure maximum patient survival. Our body triages how it uses micronutrients, prioritizing the most important functions, to ensure its short term goals of survival and reproduction.

This means that processes useful for living longer take a back seat.

Why do we care about Triage Theory?

Generally speaking, we all want to live as long and as healthy a life as possible.

If we accept what Triage theory posits, then we can help live longer and healthier by avoiding micronutrient deficiencies. Thus giving our bodies the optimum chance to prosper.

What ARE the 40 Essential Micronutrients?

In this section I’m going to do the amazing, but perhaps mind numbingly dense thing of presenting tables of the different micronutrients. If you’ve time and energy, this can be used to compare your diet and vitamin supplements against the list (!). Or perhaps bookmark it and later refer back.

Without identifying the essential micronutrients, we have little hope of remedying their deficiency.

One thing that’s worth noting, is that for many of the micronutrients, there are different sources available. So for example with Vitamin A, its direct form is retinol, but when we consume plants containing carotenoids (the most well known carotenoid being beta-carotene) our body can later convert them into retinol. This idea personally confused me. I was previously of the mindset that each vitamin was a single compound, and you need to consume that compound to meet your needs. Another term for compounds that can be converted into vitamins, is provitamins.

Which leads us to our next point of potential confusion, bio-availability. Its possible to have different forms of the same thing, and find that one is more optimal than another. For example, with magnesium, there are a large number of different forms, including magnesium oxide and magnesium citrate. Magnesium oxide has poor absorption, whereas magnesium citrate has better absorption2.

So, onto our micronutrient lists. I’ve broken this up into somewhat arbitrary delineations such as water soluble and fat soluble vitamins. There are 13 vitamins, 25 minerals, 2 omega-3’s, 9 amino acids and choline, all of which are essential.

Typically, lists of micronutrients will stop at the above list of 28 vitamins and minerals. However, Dr Bruce Ames includes omega-3’s, amino acids and choline in his list also. Deficiency in these for humans is very bad.

Fish Oils

No current RDA for omega 3, however 500mg seems to be about minimum necessary.

30.

Omega 6

Poultry, eggs, nuts, seeds

Again, no RDA, but ideally we want to have a 1:1 ratio of omega 3 to omega 6. In practice, our modern diets contain significantly more omega 6 than omega 3.

Essential Amino Acids

Count

Amino Acid

Good Food Sources

RDA for Adults
mg per kg body weight

31.

Isoleucine

Fish, meat, eggs, dairy, nuts

19

32.

Leucine

42

33.

Lysine

38

34.

Methionine

19

35.

Phenylalanine

33

36.

Threonine

20

37.

Tryptophan

5

38.

Valine

4

39.

Histidine

14

Additional Essential Nutrient

Choline is an interesting one. Whilst you won’t find it on a wikipedia list of essential micronutrients (yet), it was included by Dr Bruce Ames in all his talks. There is evidence to suggest it is an essential nutrient3. Summarising from the papers abstract, choline is required to make essential membrane phospholipids, and is a pre-cursor for biosynthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. If its good enough for Bruce Ames to list, we should take it seriously.

Count

Nutrient

Good Food Sources

RDA

40.

Choline

Cod fish, beef liver, eggs, soybeans, wheat germ

The is no RDA, however adequate intake guidelines published suggest adults consume at least 500mg per day4.

How do we use this micronutrient knowledge to live longer?

If we go back to the year 1900, we knew a bit about minerals, but almost nothing about vitamins. It took us until 1912, when Casimir Funk, found the first vitamin (niacin). As the 1900s progressed, we gradually unravelled a list of 40 essential micronutrients.

Going forward there are a number of things we can anticipate happening:

We identify more nutrients that are extremely beneficial to humans (even if they are not necessarily ‘essential’)

We clarify in more detail the desired amounts of micronutrients we need (although much of this work has already been done)

We develop better tools for mass analysis of micronutrient deficiencies (versus the hard to obtain, and often expensive blood panels that we have currently)

But working with what we have today, there are steps an individual can take to safeguard themselves against micronutrient deficiency:

Step 1: Eat a diet rich in micronutrients

Firstly, and this should be the #1 priority, aim to eat a diet rich in vegetables (raw and cooked), fish, meat (especially organ meats), eggs and nuts.

Step 2: Add supplements

On top of your healthy diet, you can “cover your ass” by taking supplements that cover the full spectrum of essential micronutrients. Thus safeguarding yourself against any dietary omissions. We want to take reasonable, but not excessive amounts of these micronutrients, because too much of them can have negative health consequences.

Step 3: Get blood tests

Due to variation in

In researching this article I was surprised to find there is no blood panel that covers all of the essential micronutrients. The closest thing I was able to come across is the SpectraCell Laboratories micronutrient test, which covers most micronutrients. It covers all 13 vitamins (yay!), and 7 of the 15 essential minerals. Although I’m not sure how important it would be to test sodium, potassium & chloride in a healthy individual (responsible for electrolyte balance). So that leaves 5 minerals; phosphorus, sulfur, iodine, iron and molybdenum that it misses out. It also doesn’t test essential amino acid deficiency or choline deficiency. I don’t think the amino acids and choline are as important, but I’ve emailed SpectraCell to learn a bit more about why these are skipped the aforementioned minerals, and will update the post as I learn more.

This test is only available in the US, and costs $390 – which I thought was quite reasonable. Of course, it will be amazing in the future to get this down to a price that everyone could afford comfortably.

Alternatives to that test are to piece meal various tests together from what you can find available. Additionally, it may be possible to 80/20 the testing, by only getting testing commonly deficient, yet high consequence micronutrients tested. At the time of writing, I don’t know enough to say which micronutrients would cover the 80/20 approach.

Micronutrients and the future

Despite the fact that the information mentioned above has been out in the public domain for some time, its clear that it hasn’t been absorbed by our collective consciousness just yet. This is evidenced by a few things:

Extremely popular multivitamin supplements that don’t cover even close to the full range of essential micronutrients.

Hospitals (at least the NHS in the UK) not providing in-patient supplementation so that they hit their necessary micronutrient intake on a daily basis.

Extremely limited availability of blood test panels that cover the full range of essential micronutrients.

Lack of routine micronutrient blood testing.

A general societal focus on the macronutrient composition of the diet.

This means that we can expect a lot of changes in the future. Generally speaking, I anticipate micronutrient testing and supplementation to become more thorough and routine in order to maintain optimal human health.

Questions & Answers

This whole theory is quite a lot to swallow. Because if its true, it suggests we can make huge strides towards better health (as a population) with some relatively simple steps. I say “simple”, because a lot of health innovation is predicated upon advanced biological breakthroughs (think gene sequencing, editing and programming). Whereas for this we already have all the technology we need.

So this section is to try and tackle some of the questions that may come up.

Q: What needs to be true (scientifically speaking) for this theory to be accurate?

A: Two things:

There needs to be actual micronutrient deficiency in the population. And then as an extension from that, the greater the micronturient deficiency problem, the greater effect fixing the deficiencies could have.

The “triage theory” itself needs to be watertight. Specifically, it means that the experiments that were ran by Ames et al. need to be repeatable. And, the negative effect of micronutrient deficiency (in some shape or form) should apply across more of the micronutrients (their paper only cites experiments done with vitamin K and Selenium.

Q: What exactly do we mean by ‘micronutrient deficiency’?

A: Deficiency could refer to two things. The first is extreme long term deficiency, which results in ilness or bad side effects. For example, a common cause of blindness in developing countries is vitamin A deficieny. The second type of deficiency is less extreme, for example, you could be deficient in vitamin A for just long enough to start getting reduced night vision – one of the early warnings for vitamin A deficiency. According to triage theory, both of these deficiency types could be problematic for long term health.

To know for sure what the specific long term effects of minor vitamin A deficiency are, we would need to run experiments.

Question: What examples do we have to show micronutrient deficiency in the population?

Answer:

Firstly, its worth noting that obtaining data about the worlds micronutrient deficiences is by its very nature; difficult. Due to the relative expense and invasiveness of the number of blood tests it would take to get an accurate picture. So whatever data we can piece together, it won’t be a complete picture.

Bruce Ames quotes some interesting US figures on nutritional deficiency in his triage theory paper. Initially when I looked into them, I was hopeful they were based on actual blood test data. It turns out however, its data based on surveys of people’s dietary intake, which is then extrapolated upon. When I hear ‘survey’ in science, I immediately want to face palm. However… this isn’t your average survey, so its worth at least hearing out. The data comes from an organisation called NHANES (The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey), who are run under the umbrella of the CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention). This particular data set came from 2003 to 2006 time periods, and covered 18,063 people who submitted complete 24-hour survey data. It shows:

…Will expand on this section further as time goes by. Research is super time consuming, and I don’t want to delay posting what I’ve synthesized so far, in pursuit of making this whole article “perfect”. Already there is enough to be useful to the reader.

Further Resources

This post is purely a synthesis of information already available, and is wholly inspired by the work of Dr Bruce Ames, Joyce McCann, Jung Suh and the rest of their team at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). See the links below to get more info straight from the source:

The intention was to use the “Tim Ferriss method” (described here). Essentially accelerating the shift from glucose burning to fat burning as quick as possible, avoiding the negative physical feelings associated with the transition period. (60 second video primer on ketones if you’re not familiar).

However, in the process of researching more about the measurement of blood glucose and blood ketones, I realised its possible to experiment a bit.

There has been some excellent research done by Valter Longo and his colleagues at the University of Southern California on a way to do fasts, without completely stopping eating.

Essentially, they were aware of all the health benefits associated with fasting, but wanted to tackle the problem of compliance. For most people these days, the thought of not eating for 5 days is too much to handle.

They have come up with a 5 day diet that is low enough in calories and carbohydrates, that the user gets the vast majority of the benefits from fasting.

Actually, they have patented their specific diet as prolonfmd.com – and are selling it to hospitals to prescribe to their patients. Your first thought is probably…huh? But its more about “playing the game”, and finding ways to get fasting into hospitals, than it is about money. I believe Valter has even gone as far as to pledge his profits from the endeavour to charity. For more on Valter Longo and the FMD diet – check out Rhonda Patrick’s podcast with him.

What patients would find when they use the prescription Prolon diet

Luckily for us, we can use Valter’s research into fasting, without getting a prescription for his diet. In the paper that they published to cell.com, they describe the details of the diet:

Damien, of Quantified Body figured out that this is similar to the macronutrient composition of avocados. So for example, you could have 2 medium sized avocados per day on each of the 5 days.

It doesn’t have to be avocados though, it could be anything that fits the above macros.

The other interesting piece of the puzzle, that contributed to this fast, was a paper by Dr Seyfried on treating brain cancer.

They found that if they could keep patients in what they termed “nutritional ketosis”, then they could achieve remission in some patients. Nutritional ketosis differs from simply measuring blood ketone levels, instead it measures the ratio between blood glucose and blood ketones. I’ve written in more detail here about it.

You can see I didn’t adhere strictly to the fast mimicking diet, and was generally under the prescribed amount of calories. But was far in excess of a simple water fast.

From the end of day 1, my ketones were elevated (no doubt helped by the MCT oil). Highest they reached was about 4.4mmol/L, with blood glucose simultaneously at 2.8mmol/L.

2.8 mmol/L blood glucose reading (about 39 mg/dL)

4.4 mmol/L blood ketone

The measurement of blood ketones and blood glucose come in useful for 3 main things:

Tracking your transition into ketosis – and correlating how you feel with where you are in ketosis

Giving you a measurable goal to aim for and maintain! (this is huge)

You can use the blood measurements to test how different foods / ketone sources affect them

Regarding #3 – when I ate the second avocado on day 3, my bloods actually showed I came out of nutritional ketosis. Even though my ketones were at 2.5 mmol/L, my blood glucose was at 4.3 mmol/L. Which is a ratio of 1.72 – rather than the desired ratio of 1.0 or lower.

After Thoughts

All in all this experiment was a success.

Its becoming increasingly more obvious that fasting is an important tool in humanities arsenal against disease. Once upon a time, as hunter and gatherers, these fasted states were forced on us by the environment. Now in today’s abundant first world, we have to artificially create them. As with any “medicine”, one of the big hurdles is compliance.

The last 5 day fast I did was back in November, and it was taxing to say the least. I certainly didn’t feel in a rush to do another one. However, this time around, I felt much more functional throughout the fast – and can see a way to make this a more regular thing. Regular being something in the order of twice per year.

Exiting The Fast + Ketosis

Probably the worst part of the fast this time was the exit. I think it comes down to the harsh way I went from nutritional ketosis, to consuming reasonably high levels of carbohydrates. In retrospect, I’d probably prepare a meal with some fatty meat + vegetables. That way it fulfils the need I have to *eat everything*, but won’t cause such a harsh crash after.

I’ve never been a strong believer in living in ketosis, and I’m still not. But there’s something about seeing the effect on your body when it goes from ketosis to glucose burning, that makes you question if you’re doing it a favour!

Further Questions

There’s a few points from this experiment I’d like to learn more about:

Evening of day 3 I was still producing ketones, but out of nutritional ketosis. Morning of day 4 I was back in nutritional ketosis. What effect does coming out of nutritional ketosis have on the overall efficacy of the fast?

If we were to compare a completely water based fast, to the fast mimicking diet, what are we losing out on?

If we are losing out on something, could this be mitigated by going to 6 or 7 days?

Anyway, that’s a rather large brain dump. Hopefully if you’ve got this far you’ve been able to extract some nuggets to help you in your journey. If you’ve got any questions or comments, please leave them below. As for any blogger, feedback is wonderful.

Generally these blog posts are a result of scratching my own itch (answering my own question), and this post is no different.

At the time of writing this, I’m doing a 5-day fast, and wanted to understand the readings I’m getting for my blood glucose and blood ketone levels.

Initially I thought that blood ketones were all that mattered, and certainly a lot of people only talk about that reading. But looking at Dr Thomas Seyfried’s paper on treating brain cancer (glioblastomas). It suggests that its important to take into account blood glucose also. In their study, they acheieved optimal results when their patients maintained what they called ‘nutritional ketosis’. And as part of the paper, they included a formula for what this means.

The chart below describes visually what they mean by nutritional ketosis, and how it affected the tumour growth. The red is an increase in ketones as a fictional patient goes deeper into ketosis. The black line represents blood glucose, that decreases to a plateau, as carbohydrate sources are removed from the diet, and glycogen stores decrease.

So that sweet spot they reach at the end is an optimum level of nutritional ketosis. Now… obviously in our case we are (hopefully) not trying to slow the growth of a glioblastoma. But by getting into ketosis we’re hoping to achieve a number of benefits including:

The extent of these benefits will depend if you’re eating a keto diet, or doing a water fast/fast mimicking diet. But all 3 should improve the biomarkers such that you have a reduced risk of major diseases such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

And studies like this one indicate that the optimal benefits from ketosis lie in maintaining a 1:1 or lower ratio of glucose to ketones.

So on to the crux of this post, how to calculate GKI. What you’re trying to do is compare apples with apples, you really really want both readings in mmol/L. In my case, having a meter sourced from the UK, that’s how they came, so I simply do:

Glucose Reading (mmol/L) ÷ Ketone Reading (mmol/L)

However, if you’re in the USA, your blood glucose reading will be in mg/dL. You’ll know, because the meter should say mg/dL. But to be sure, if you blood glucose is in the 100s as a score, rather than single digits, that’s likely mg/dL.

So you’ll want to convert that glucose reading into mmol/L by doing:

Your Glucose Reading (mg/dL) ÷ 18.02

This converts your reading from mg/dL into mmol/L, and then you can do the above calculation (glucose reading divided by ketone reading) to get your glucose ketone index score.

What sticks out for me with all this stuff, is how amazingly valuable it can be in our treatment (and prevention of cancer), and yet in 2017 an incredibly small number of people (& physicians!) know and understand this work. For those with cancer, if its combined with other treatments (described by Dom D’Agostino here), its even better. Its 5 years since Thomas Seyfried published his book ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease’. Time will tell how fast we are able to communicate this “meme” to a wider audience.

Rhonda’s Motivations for Diet Choices

Breakfast #1 – Scrambled Eggs with Kale & Garlic + 1/2 Grapefruit

Eggs

She eats these for the choline they provide. Choline can be converted by the body into acetylcholine, which is an essential neurotransmitter.

Sauteed Kale & Garlic

One reason Rhonda chooses Kale is due to its high concentration of lutein and zeaxanthin. These cartenoids help protect the eyes from damaging blue light. They also beneficial to the brain, improving neural processing and neural efficiency.

Tomatillo Salsa

Rhonda primarily eats her eggs with tomatillo salsa to make them less boring (lol). It’s also high in tomatidine, which has been shown to boost muscle mass in mice by reducing the activity of a gene called ATF4, known for inhibiting muscle protein synthesis.

Grapefruit

The grapefruit provides ferulic acid, a molecule that inhibits the proinflammatory cytokine TNF-alpha and E2 series prostaglandins (which can also be inflammatory). Ferulic acid has also been shown to be anti-carcinogenic. The grapefruit is also a source of naringenin has a variety of potential benefits.

Avocado Oil

Rhonda stays away from cooking oils that are high in polyunsaturated fat, because it is easily oxydized, and consuming oxydized fat is very harmful. Avocado oil is high in monounsaturated, and low in polyunsaturated fat. It has a very high smoke point, meaning that it withstand some heat.

Mustard Powder

She adds mustard powder the kale and other cruciferous vegetables she cooks. This helps convert the glucosinolate in the plants, into isothiocynates. This compound (isothiocynates) has benefits in humans, but interestingly, is toxic to bugs and insects. The plants use it to help prevent being eaten.

Breakfast #2 – Nut & Berry Cereal

Another breakfast Rhonda has is a nut and berry cereal. For the base she combines chopped nuts and a mix of berries with some coconut milk. In addition to the base, she may add hydrolysed collagen powder, flaxseed, raw cacao nibs, almond butter and occasionally VSL#3 (her probiotic supplement of choice).

Chopped Nuts

The cereal contains a wide array of chopped nuts including walnuts, pecan and macadamia nuts.

This provides magnesium, calcium, zinc and omega-3 fatty ALA (although not a substitute for marine omega-3s​).

Berries

Amongst the berries Rhonda adds are blueberries. These are rich in Pterostilbene which is similar to Resveratrol but is 4x more bioavailable. In mice it has been shown to improve brain function, prevent heart disease, and to ward off some types of cancer. They are also rich in anthocyanins, a molecule that has been shown to lower DNA damage. DNA damage has been shown to cause cancer and lead to depletion of stem cell pools + it also plays a role in the aging process.

Rhonda also adds some pomegranate into the cereal. One of the compounds in pomegranate is transformed by gut microbes into a molecule called urolithin A, which causes mitophagy a process important for the renewal of mitochondria. Urolithin A has shown some impressive things in research on other organisms, including improving muscle function and endurance by up to 42% in mice and increasing lifespan by more than 45% in worms.

Hydrolyzed collagen powder

Rhonda eats hydrolyzed collagen for the proline which accelerates wound healing and for glycine which is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter. Great Lakes collagen powder is her brand of choice.

Coconut milk

Coconut milk is rich in medium chain triglycerides. She doesn’t consume dairy milk because it contains salivary protein which binds to Anthocyanin and polyphenols, limiting their bioavailability.

Flaxseed

These provide extra alpha lipoic acid and fibre.

Raw Cacao Nibs

These have a number of polyphenols including EGCG which activate many antioxidant genes and has been shown to kill cancer cells.

Lunch #1 – Smoothies

Rhonda rotates between a variety of smoothie recipes (example ingredients listed above). The base to most of her smoothies are kale, chard, spinach and avocado. For smoothie #1 listed above, you can check this youtube video and for smoothie #2 above, this youtube video.

Lunch #2 – Avocado with salmon roe and sauerkraut

Avocados are high in potassium and provide all of the various forms of vitamin E (both tocopherols and tocotrienols). Which is good, because if you supplement vitamin E you only get one form of it. They are also a great source of monounsaturated fat.

Salmon roe caviar is a staple of Rhonda’s diet. She particularly likes it because the omega-3 fats are in phospholipid form which has greater bioavailability to be transported into the brain via the mfsd2a transporter. This is the form that is best taken up by the brain (including the developing fetal brain). It also has a good amount of astaxanthin which protects the omega-3’s from oxidation and does the same for neurons. Studies looking at DHA and EPA levels in red blood cells have shown a correlation between higher omega-3 status and having a to 2 cm larger brain volume. So getting omega-3 into and keeping it in the brain is definitely a brain aging priority for Rhonda.

Sauerkraut is a good source of fermentable fiber aka prebiotics that is fuel for the commensal gut bacteria so that they can produce compounds (such as short chain fatty acids) that feed more commensal bacteria and feed gut epithelial cells which are required to make the gut barrier. These compounds produced by the gut bacteria serve as signaling molecules to make specific types of immune cells, an important indirect role that fiber also has in the diet that helps it influence immune activities. The sauerkraut itself contains various probiotics (mostly the lactobacillus strains) which are beneficial lactic acid producing bacteria which have recently been suggested to possibly play a role in cancer prevention.

Dinner #1 – Cooked Vegetables & Baked Wild Alaskan Salmon

Rhonda likes a range of cooked vegetables, with a particular focus on the cruciferous family, such as:

Spinach

Collard greens

Bok choy

Broccoli

Brussels sprouts

Parsnips

Cruciferous vegetables contain isothiocyanates, and so because of this, she typically eats them with mustard powder sprinkled on top to increase the amount of myrocinase available. Associative studies have shown that the top 20% of consumers of cruciferous vegetable have a 22% reduction in all-cause mortality. For more info on why adding myrocinase to isothiocynates is useful, see this post on sulforaphane – which is a super useful compound which activates the NRF-2 pathway, responsible for regulating around 200 different genes.

Folate in Green Vegetables

Cooked vegetables like sauteed spinach are very high in folate. Folate provides a precursor that makes a DNA nucleotide called thymine. Every time you repair a damaged cell or make a new cell in your liver, muscle, brain etc., you need to make new DNA which means you need folate. Folate was also very recently shown to increase the growth of stem cells, which is important because stem cell pools deplete with age and are a major cause of organ aging and dysfunction. Folate has recently been shown to play a role in protecting telomeres, the tiny caps on the ends of chromosomes that are a biomarker for age because they get shorter every year.

A recent study showed that mothers with highest folate levels had newborns with telomeres 10% longer and every 10 ng/ml increase in serum folate levels, newborns had a 5.8% increase in telomere length which actually suggests that maternal nutrition may actually play a role in determining the length of telomeres that we have to start with.

Wild Alaskan Salmon

Rhonda eats salmon 2-3 times per week, which is what the American Heart Association recommends. They recommend that adults consume 500 mg/d of EPA and DHA (~2-3 servings of fatty fish per wk or ~8 oz of fish/wk). However, the mean intake in Western society is ~135 mg/d and about ~2 servings of fish per month.

EPA is a powerful anti-inflammatory fatty acid that has been shown to lower brain inflammation. DHA is a critical component of all cell membranes that makes up 30% of the fatty acids in the brain, or about 8% of the total weight. Omega-3 fatty acids have recently been shown to positively change gene expression in several brain regions and also generally shown to stave off brain aging. But also important is just not dying. People with the highest omega-3 fatty acid intake have been associated with having a 9% reduced risk of all-cause mortality. For each 1% increment of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood there was associated a 20% decrease in risk of all-cause mortality.

Dinner #2 – Large Salad & Grass Fed Filet Steak

When Rhonda isn’t eating cooked vegetables with her dinner, she’s having a large salad full of greens. These provide her with a range of micronutrients including folate, magnesium, calcium, vitamin K1, lutein, zeaxanthin and sulfoquinovose, a prebiotic that feeds beneficial bacteria in the gut.

Rhonda eats a grass-fed filet steak a few times per month which is a good source of vitamin b12, iron, and zinc. ~16% of all menstruating women are actually iron deficient. For vegetarians it has been recommended to take in about twice the RDA for iron, since iron which is bound to phytate in plant sources is ~2-times less bioavailable

Dinner #3 – Chicken Bone Soup with Vegetables & Spices

Another protein Rhonda rotates for dinner is chicken legs from pasture-raised chicken. In addition to the protein they also provide some cartilage which is high in collagen, proline and glycine.

Occasionally Rhonda takes the chicken bones, and throws them in some water with some spices and vegetables to make a chicken bone soup. This provides all the same benefits as the hydrolyzed collagen powder. Chicken is also very high in selenium which is a cofactor needed for all glutathione-related enzymes to work and also has a modest amount of zinc, copper, and iron.

Tim has tried the majority of smart drugs on the market, including things like the racitam family (piracetam, aniracetam etc), modafinil, ritalin etc. At one stage, before he was a bestselling author, he ran a supplement company called BrainQuicken, focused on selling cognitive enhancement supplements. So he knows his stuff.

As of Sept 2016, Tim has decided the short term gain from many of the popular smart drugs are not worth the long term side effects.

Therefore, Tim Ferriss nootropic choices are a little different from most. That being said, he still uses a number of products that give him a sustainable cognitive boost.

Creatine & Ubiquinol

Tim considers this combination for those with alzheimer’s or other mitochondrial based neurodegenerative diseases in their family history. He takes them on a daily basis.

Exogenous Ketones

The KetoCaNa is the weaker of the two, but is the most palatable. KetoForce would have a greater impact on your blood ketone level (beta-hydroxybutyrate). KetoForce is an alkaline liquid, that you can add to water to drink. To balance out the alkalinity you can add some lemon juice.

If you’ve been paying attention to Tim recently, you’ll know he’s heavily on the band wagon of low carbohydrate, high fat eating. Whether he’s in ketosis, or just maintaining LCHF.

His tinned sardines of choice are Wild Planet Canned Sardines in Olive Oil. These were a recommendations from his good friend, and biochemistry beast Dom D’Agostino. Who himself maintains a largely ketogenic diet.

Wild Planet tout their sardines as sustainably harvested in well-managed fisheries with negligible by-catch or habitat damage. Given the Tim Ferriss affect, and the amount of sardines they must have sold when he recommended them, sustainably harvested is important.

Front of Packaging.

Back of Packaging.

You can see from the back of the packet (above), that the micronutrient content is good. And if we look at the nutritional information (below), we can see the macros are good too. Each tin has 22g fat, 25g protein and 0g of carbohydrate. Ideal for those adhering to LCHF or Keto diets.

Personally I like them in the 12 pack (cheaper in bulk at $28), but they are also available in a 6 pack (at $19).

Generally speaking, I’ll eat these straight out the tin, or if I’m feeling extravagant, spread them on toast and lightly grill with some vinegar, salt and pepper. But here’s another good suggestions for consuming sardines (via the RooshV forum):

Sardine Spread:

Take one can (~100g) of sardines in olive oil, remove tail and bones, put them all in a bowl

Add 100g of cottage cheese

Add some chopped onion and garlic

Spice it up: salt, pepper, oregano, basil, parsley

Add lemon juice made from squeezing one lemon

Take a spoon and squish everything together. Keep squishing and mixing everything in the bowl until you get a spread which you can put on bread or crackers. I personally prefer to eat this spread with rye crackers and tomatoes, but you can experiment and find some other combination that tastes good.

And just remember to brush your teeth after consuming. They’re super smelly as food goes.

Summary of the main benefits she mentions, in the context of nootropics:

Positive effect on mood and alleviated depressive symptoms and reduced anxiety (so far confirmed in mouse models, with a current trial underway to test in humans)

Improved short term and spatial memory (so far proven in mice, in the context of conditions that affect memory such as alzheimers)

Increase in neurite outgrowth – which is how damaged neurons and synapses repair themeselves from injury

And here’s the full excerpt:

“Getting past all of the usual suspects on our list of nootropics here, the other nootropic that I actually take frequently is SULFORAPHANE! It’s not even usually considered a nootropic by most people but I think it has potential to be considered at least a mild nootropic for a variety of reasons. One of the the best reasons to make this argument is the fact that sulforaphane crosses the blood-brain barrier, at least in mice. This is the first criteria that a substance must meet in order for there to be a compelling argument that it somehow exerts effects on the brain — but, in addition to that, it also affects the activities of the immune system which is now known to affect the brain through a series of lymphatic vessels. this new understanding of the immune system’s ability to interact with the brain also helps to explain why manipulating levels of systemic inflammation has, in clinical trials, been shown to affect feelings of depression either inducing depression in the presence of an artificial increase in activity in the immune system by injecting things like interferons into human trial participants or reducing depression caused by this artificial increase in inflammation through the co-administration of a natural anti-inflammatory, such as eicosapentaenoic acid, better known as the omega-3 fatty acid EPA.

In addition to sulforaphane crossing the blood-brain barrier in mice, the compound has been shown in a couple of randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies in humans to have one sort of effect or another on brain and behavior. For example, treatment with sulforaphane extracted from broccoli sprouts at doses ranging from about 9 mg to about 25 mg, which is an amount that might be found in around 65 grams of fresh broccoli sprouts on the high end, was able to improve autistic behavior checklist scores by 34% and significantly improved social interaction, abnormal behavior, and verbal communication in young men with autism spectrum disorder. Similarly, some measurable effects have been shown in a small trial of people with schizophrenia.

The fact that sulforaphane is exhibiting clear effects on the brain and behavior of people, such as those with autism spectrum disorder, hints that it might continue to show promise in other areas of cognition too. This is because animal studies have really shown a diversity of very interesting effects that are really just waiting to be replicated in humans.

For example: Sulforaphane has been shown to improve spatial working memory and short term memory in mice in the context of conditions that can affect memory in a deleterious way, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. It has been shown to increase neurite outgrowth, which is how damaged neurons and synapses repair themselves after damage from traumatic brain injury. The effect of sulforaphane on a rodent model of Alzheimer’s Disease in some respects is particularly interesting, because, if we go back to our conversation a little bit earlier about the potential choline may have for mitigating some of the negative effects of this disorder, sulforaphane has also been shown to significantly reduce memory impairment that has been experimentally induced by a drug that works specifically by interfering with the effects of acetylcholine in the nervous system, a drug known as scopolamine.

Sulforaphane was, in this animal trial to which I am referring, able to improve the cholinergic system by increasing acetylcholine levels, decreasing acetylcholine esterase activity, and increasing choline acetyltransferase, which is the enzyme responsible for synthesizing acetylcholine in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. This ties in nicely with some of our discussion earlier about the potential importance of the choline system in cognition. Finally, sulforaphane has been shown to have a positive effect on mood and alleviated depressive symptoms and anxiety as effectively as the antidepressant Prozac in a mouse model of depression and I understand that there is at least one trial currently in the beginning stages looking to confirm this effect in humans as well.

If you consider the variety of brain and behavioral effects demonstrated already in humans, I’m optimistically hoping that some of the groups out there working on these questions will have something good to show for it in the future.”

Dr Rhonda Patrick is a big advocate of a healthy gut biome. She aims to achieve this primarily through a nutritionally diverse diet that’s rich in fibre. On top of this, she tops up her gut bacteria with supplemental probiotics.

At one stage she used to try a variety of probiotics, but now she uses just one probiotic; VSL #3. To quote her:

I’ve changed my probiotic to VSL#3. It has 10X the bugs than any other brand and 25 published studies showing efficacy in IBS, IBD, colitis, and c.diff.

Pricing – Pills vs Sachets

If bought in sachets, its $3.40 per serving ($103 for 30 sachets), and if bought in pill form its $2 per serving (each $60 tub contains 60 pills, and the recommended serving size is 2 pills). Beyond the cost, there is an additional difference between the pills vs sachets. Each capsule has 112.5 billion live bacteria, whereas each sachet has 450 billion.

Currently Rhonda takes a maintenance dose of probiotics between once per week and once every 2 weeks. Specifically she takes the sachets containing 450 billion live bacteria:

Alternatives?

Rhonda knows so much about this subject, compared to the layman, that I tend to take her advice. She talks about two main problems with other probiotics:

They often die when left unrefrigerated

They don’t contain a meaningful amount of live bacteria

If you’re set on taking a probiotic other than VSL #3, it would be worth checking if there are any peer reviewed studies backing up the products efficacy. For studies on VSL #3, search it on Google Scholar.

Further Research

Whilst supplementing probiotics like VSL #3 is useful, it shouldn’t replace a nutritionally diverse diet, rich in plant fibre. To learn more about this subject, take a look at the following Rhonda Patrick interview with Dr. Erica & Dr. Justin Sonnenburg

This list is compiled through a combination of Rhonda’s tweets, and her podcast episodes. The intention is to keep it as up to date as possible. If you see something that needs changing, comment below.

Rhonda’s Base Supplement List (Details)

Multivitamins

According to her blog she takes Pure Encapsulations multivitamins blend. She chooses it because of the ratios of the vitamins and minerals in it. It contains methyl folate, which can be used by people with MTHFR gene polymorphisms (half the population). It also has other goodies she likes (lutein, CoQ, Boron etc).

B-Complex

Rhonda previously took an ‘activated’ B-Complex produced by Swanson Ultra (see this tweet), in addition to the B vitamins contained in her multivitamin ONE. Swanson’s B vitamin supplement is specifically formulated for high bio availability. It includes 400mcg of folate (for those of the population who can’t process folic acid efficiently). More info can be found on the Swanson product page.

Rhonda has since stopped adding a B complex, because she gets enough B vitamins from her diet + daily ONE multivitamin.

However, for those like Rhonda’s Mum who have are T-homozygous on their MTHFR gene (SNP = rs1801133), which leads to poor uptake of folate, they may benefit from up to 800 micrograms supplementation of 5 methylfolate. ONE multivitamin has 400 micrograms, so this means you would need an additional source such as Swansons B-Complex. Other supplements that may be of benefit for this issue are B6 and B12.

Why is poor folate uptake a potential problem? Folate influences homocysteine levels. Low folate can mean high homocysteine, which can lead to hyperhomocysteinaemia, which can result in a number of problems, including cardiovascular disease.

For clarity on what T-homozygous means in the above context (because it confused me at first), the homo part of the word means “same/identical”. And the zygous part refers to the allele (a gene in a certain position). The “T” part refers to thymine, one of the four compounds that connect to the helixes that make up our DNA.

The one in particular to watch out for in your genetic report is 677TT, which has the worst enzyme activity, compared to the most common genotype 677CC. TT has 30% of the mean activity compared to CC individuals. Heterozygous individuals (CT) have a mean MTHFR activity of 65% compared to CC. (PubMed Source – unfortunately the abstract doesn’t include these figures, but I’ve checked, and the full text does).

If all this talk of MTFHR gene mutations has you curious, you can get your SNPs sequenced quickly and easily. Thus allowing you to access your genetic data. SNP sequencing costs as little as $79 from Ancestry. Or $99 from 23andMe. The main differences between the services will be the online interfaces which you use to collect your results + the version of the Illumina chip they’re using to sequence on.

23andMe also offer a $199 service, which provides health analysis on top of ancestry. But you don’t need this. With both their $99 and $199 packages you can export your SNPs, and run them through the promethease service for $5, which lets you drill easily into your relevant SNPs.

Vitamin D

Rhonda emphasises in her video on Vitamin D that its important to take it at the right dose. In an excellent infographic, posted on her blog, she suggests 4000IU of daily supplementation is enough to bring people that were previously deficient up to 30ng/ml, without toxicity. Her target range is 40 – 60 ng/ml. To achieve this tight range, vitamin D blood testing is a necessity.

Rhonda’s preferred multivitamin supplement (Pure Encapsulations ONE) contains 2,000IU of vitamin D3. So then she often supplements with an additional 2,000IU of D3, because she doesn’t get much sunlight (which our bodies can use to produce vitamin D). She has mentioned previously taking Swanson’s D3 supplement and NOW D3 supplement (both 2,000IU).

Rhonda highly recommends people test their Vitamin D levels.

To ascertain you’re not deficient in Vitamin D

To understand the impact that supplementation is having (or not having).

Manifestations of Vitamin D toxicity, from overdosing, include hypercalcemia and calcinosis, the associated calcification of soft tissues including organs such as the kidneys, heart, and lungs, along with blood vessels. Not nice stuff!

Vitamin K2

Swanson’s K2 supplement, which derives its MK7 from Natto, is Rhonda’s go to choice. There are two popular forms of vitamin K2 commercially available. These are MK4 and MK7. MK7 is produced by bacterial fermentation of soy, and appears to have a longer half life then MK4.

Benefits of K2 are mostly related to bone strength and arterial health (reducing calcification or even decalcifying, with a possible reduction in blood pressure).

Krill Oil

Rhonda takes NOW Neptune Krill Oil 1000mg. The benefit of taking the Krill oil on top of the EPA is that it has DHA Phosphatidylserine. Which is a vital phospholipid component of brain and nerve cell membranes.

Magnesium

Previously Rhonda has spoken about taking calcium and magnesium in a 2 to 1 ratio. Specifically Swanson’s formulation with 600mg of Calcium and 300mg of Magnesium.

Most recently, on her podcast with Tim Ferriss, she also discussed taking magnesium citrate by Thorne. This is actually a different form of magnesium, compared to the Swanson formulation above, which uses magnesium oxide. 90 caps at 135mg per cap.

Rhonda’s preferred Nootropic “Smart Drug” Choices

Rhonda’s approach to smart drugs is quite different from most. She stays away from compounds that are inhibitors of enzymes in the brain (which rules out a large number of traditional nootropics). She also stays away from compounds that humans haven’t evolved alongside, on the basis that with novel substances, its hard to know the potential long term side effect profile.

Choline – Alpha GPC

Rhonda takes a form of choline called alpha-glycerophosphocholine (aka Alpha GPC) to sharpen her brain ahead of public speaking events. On these occasions she takes 600mg, with the aim to increase her attention and focus. Noting that 300mg didn’t appear to be enough to see benefits.

She doesn’t take this supplement very often. However, she does make a point to include natural sources of choline in her diet, such as eggs, almonds, spinach, broccoli and chicken.

Whilst there are different forms of choline, Alpha GPC is good because it is quick to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Sulforaphane – From Self Grown Broccoli Sprouts

Sulforaphane is heavily touted for its potential life extension properties (see this separate post on its benefits). However, Rhonda also suggests it has mild nootropic abilities, based on its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier (tested in mice models), coupled with its anti-inflammatory properties and positive effects on the immune system.

Rhonda explains the nootropic benefits of sulforaphane in her latest podcast with Tim Ferriss. See this excerpt for the details.

Whilst there are sulforaphane supplements available (such as Avmacol), Rhonda chooses to grow her own broccoli sprouts and then blend them into smoothies.

The dosage used in clinical trials often ranges from 30-60mg of sulforaphane. Estimates land fresh broccoli sprouts at a concentration of about 1 gram fresh weight to around 0.45mg of sulforaphane. So to achieve 30-60mg, you’d need to consume between 67-134g of sprouts.

Rhonda says (on her latest Tim Ferriss podcast) she consumes up to 4 ounces (113g) of broccoli sprouts a few times per week. Broccoli seeds yield approximately 5:1. So this means if you start off with 1 ounce of broccoli seeds, you’d end up with approximately 5 ounces of sprouts.

To achieve Rhonda’s 8 ounces consumption per week, you need to grow approximately 1 and a 1/2 ounces (43g) of seeds each week. To put a price to that, Todd’s seeds (for example) are $24 per pound (1lb = 16 ounces). So you’re looking at a cost of $2.25 of seeds per week. That’s not very expensive, given the potential long term health benefits.

Granted, if you’re consuming 4 ounces of broccoli sprouts in one sitting, its a lot. You’ll probably want to emulate Rhonda, and blend them in with a smoothie. Her blender of choice (like Joe Rogan) is the Blendtec Classic. But any decent blender will do.

Its worth also taking a look at Rhonda’s video on tripling the bioavailability of sulforaphane your sprouts. Essentially you heat your broccoli sprouts to 70C, hot enough that it disables the epithiospecifier protein, but not too hot that it disables the myrocinase enzyme (responsible for converting the glucoraphanin into sulforaphane). We do this because glucoraphanin can be converted into two forms of sulforaphane (regular sulforaphane, the stuff we want, and sulforaphane nitrile, which does not contain the anti-carcinogenic properties we want). By knocking out the epithiospecifier protein, which is needed for converting glucoraphanin to sulforaphane nitrile, we increase potential conversion to regular sulforaphane (yay!).

Further supplements Rhonda likes

Probiotics

Rhonda takes a maintenance dose of probiotics between once per week and once every 2 weeks. And then relies on her diet for enough fibre and nutritional diversity to maintain a healthy gut. The probiotic she takes is one called VSL #3, which actually gets shipped with a cold pack, to preserve the active probiotic ingredients.

Collagen

Both Rhonda and Tim Ferriss take a collagen supplement by Great Lakes. Its beneficial for the connective tissues like tendons, ligaments, cartilage, joints and bone.

Meriva (Curcumin Phytosome)

Rhonda cites a number of examples where NSAIDs (non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs) such as Ibuprofen are potentially quite bad for our health. And suggests an alternative, a highly bio available form of curcumin, known as Meriva. Specifically Rhonda takes Thorne Reasearch’s Meriva.

Further foods Rhonda has recommended:

Beet Powder

This recommendation comes via Rhonda’s Instagram post on beets. She talks about the many studies that have shown positive effects of beets on blood pressure, endothelial function, heart health, improved blood flow to the brain, and endurance performance. Apparently beets are one of the highest sources of nitrate (which then gets converted into nitric oxide) and is thought to increase blood flow to the brain. Beets are also high in vitamin C, which prevents the conversion of nitrates into nitrosamines (those carcinogens that are formed from the nitrites which are used as preservatives).

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the post is her anecdotal story of using beets (powder) to help rid her mother and mother-in-law of high blood pressure (without meds!). Rhonda says:

“My mother was diagnosed with high blood pressure (after multiple visits) and her physician wanted to get her on blood pressure meds. She opted to wait and see what I said (thank you, mom). I got her some organic beet extract powder to use once or twice a day. She used 9 grams a day for two weeks and went back to get her blood pressure measured again. Her blood pressure was completely normal and now she does not need the blood pressure meds! After this, I ordered some for my mother-in-law who was also diagnosed with high blood pressure. The same thing happened to her…her blood pressure is normal! While this is not a clinical trial, I’m pretty happy that the beetroot extract seemed to help lower blood pressure in two people that I care about deeply. The product I got for them was by Activz”

High blood pressure is a huge issue for people as they get into later life, as it increases the risk of a haemorrhagic stroke in the brain. So if this anecdote is applicable to even a small % of people with high blood pressure, that’s huge. The Activz Organic Beet Powder Rhonda used for her family has the equivalent of 1 cup of beet juice per 9 gram scoop.

Wild Salmon Roe Caviar

Rhonda particularly likes VitalChoice’s wild salmon roe caviar as a source of omega-3 because the fats are in phospholipid form, which has greater bioavailability to be transported into the brain via the mfsd2a transporter. This is the form that is best taken up by the brain (including the developing fetal brain). It also has a good amount of astaxanthin which protects the omega-3’s from oxidation and does the same for neurons.

Studies looking at DHA and EPA levels in red blood cells have shown a correlation between higher omega-3 status and having a to 2 cm larger brain volume. Therefore getting omega-3 into and keeping it in the brain is definitely a brain aging priority for Rhonda. Salmon roe provides ~438 mg of EPA and ~514 mg of DHA per ounce.

One way in which she likes to eat them, is to put them on half an avocado with some fresh lemon juice.

Rhonda opts to buy her salmon roe caivar in bulk from VitalChoice. It comes frozen and sectioned into quadrants, so she thaws one quadrant at a time. Perhaps due to Rhonda’s fan base, VitalChoice are currently out of stock of their bulk 2.2lbs option. They do however still have stock of their 6oz jars. See this post on Instagram for Rhonda talking more about VitalChoice’s salmon roe caviar.

Parting Words

So that’s quite a lengthy list of supplements! And the somewhat frustrating thing is, nootropics aside, if you purchase them and take them, you may not notice any difference in how you feel.

As discussed in Rhonda’s interview with Bruce Ames, the body prioritizes micronutrients for survival and reproductive activities over using them for activities related to longevity. This means that micronutrient shortages over time can reduce our long term health. This is analogous to car maintenance. Short term, keeping a car well maintained may seem expensive, and over the top, but long term, the car will be running smoothly whilst other cars its age will be running into issues.

I think its important to remember that, the next time you pop your supplements, and don’t feel anything remarkable as a result. Its a long term strategy.

If you appreciate this post, remember of course that none of it would be possible without Rhonda Patrick’s hard work in understanding biological mechanisms, and explaining them to the wider world (us!). We can support her by donating to her Patreon campaign. This also frees her up to continue communicating all this great science to us, over at her website, FoundMyFitness.

Ever since I heard about a San Francisco based startup called WellnessFX, I’ve been interested in getting blood tests.

The way Tim Ferriss described periodic blood testing with WellnessFX, it sounded so obviously important, that I couldn’t understand why we don’t do it.

He described it like this. Imagine trying to tell what’s happening in a football game, if all you’ve got is one freeze frame on the tv. Now imagine you’ve got freeze frames every few minutes, you can start to build up a picture of what’s happening.

That’s not too dissimilar to blood testing, if we can build up a picture of our hormone and vitamin levels over time we can pre-empt illness, and take evasive procedures to avoid it.

And then… I came back to Earth, and remembered I’m in the UK, without private healthcare. And the only way I’ll get blood tests on the NHS is if I have symptoms. I need to be ill otherwise they don’t want to know.

So I kinda forgot about the blood tests for a while, until a friend mentioned Thriva.

And the great part about their test, is you don’t need to go anywhere to do it. They send you a small pack in the mail that gives you everything you need to take your own blood (less than 1ml!) and send it back to them.

How Does It Work?

Here’s what the kit looks like, and how to use it (roughly speaking):

It’s a game changer really. All of a sudden it allows people to take health into their own hands.

What Does It Tell You?

So you’re probably wondering… okay, so I send my blood off… what next? Here’s a quick video showing the Thriva dashboard where you can get your results:

Is It Worth The Money?

If you’ve got a health care plan that covers tests like these, then sure, there’s no need. But for the rest of us, £50 is a reasonable price to pay for keeping on top of our health.

How could they improve things?

Currently the number of tests available through Thriva is limited. However, they are working on expanding things.

My ideal scenario, would be for them offer a large range of blood tests, all at affordable prices, and available through the mail. I believe there are some tests that should be taken in a clinic setting (e.g. homocysteine), but if they can get the majority to work via mail that would be ideal.

Currently they offer recurring tests, so that you can measure progress over time. Again, more customisation on those tests would be good.

C Reactive Protein (CRP) – this is a substance produced by the liver when inflammation is present. High levels = bad

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) – is a precursor to testosterone and estrogen, produced in the adrenal glands. Low levels = bad

But credit where credit is due. Thriva is a relatively new company, which may or may not be profitable yet. They need scale. What they’ve done so far is incredible, and I hope they’re able to continue to do so.